Something strange went down in New Jersey on election night, and the numbers just don’t pass the smell test. Republican Jack Ciattarelli lost the governor’s race to Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill by a jaw-dropping margin — 56% to 43%. That’s not just a loss; it’s a blowout that blindsided pollsters and left conservatives across the country asking serious questions about what really happened in the Garden State.
Trump lost New Jersey by only six points just a year earlier, and anyone following this race knows Jack Ciattarelli had serious momentum heading into Election Day — even picking up endorsements from local Democrats and labor unions along the way.
This was the GOP’s best and only real shot at flipping a governorship, and every major poll suggested the race was within striking distance. But now, after the surprising blowout, Quantus Insights — one of the most accurate pollsters of the 2024 cycle — is asking the tough, uncomfortable questions that a lot of voters are thinking: what on earth happened in New Jersey, and do the numbers actually add up?
“Our first September Labor Day poll showed Sherrill +10,” Quantus Insights wrote in a lengthy post on X. “By late September, after debates, campaign controversies, and the Kirk assassination, everything changed. The race tightened fast. More Republicans entered the likely electorate and independents started breaking for Ciattarelli.”
The post noted further:
We confirmed this again in late October: Sherrill +3 from a random sample of 100,000 NJ voters showing Republicans fired up and turning out. However, the Democrats were holding the edge and keeping a breakout from occurring. We rather easily detected potential for a +5 to +6 Sherrill victory despite our polling showing +3.
Notably, Sherrill was only marginally improving with Hispanic voters, showing similar margins to 2024. While our last poll did show black voters finally swinging her way. We had Ciatt at single digit support among black voters.
Then election night happened and the results stunned nearly everyone.
Exit polls, turnout numbers, demographic breakdowns — none of it lines up with the final results. The math just doesn’t make sense when compared to virtually every public survey leading up to Election Day.
And here’s the kicker: this isn’t some lone pollster crying foul because they blew a call. Quantus Insights pointed out that 99% of pollsters missed the final margin by roughly the same massive gap. That’s not a fluke — that’s a red flag.
“Something unusual happened in New Jersey, and we’re still unpacking why,” the pollster’s analysts noted:
But here’s where it really gets wild: the Right Angle News Network dug into the data and found some seriously eyebrow-raising numbers. Between 2021 and 2025, New Jersey’s gubernatorial turnout reportedly jumped by half a million votes — that’s more than double the pace of the state’s population growth.
And get this — nearly all of those new votes broke Democrat, even though Republicans have held the edge in new voter registrations during that period. That’s not just strange; it’s statistically baffling:
Did more than half a million Democrats really just appear out of nowhere after skipping the last three gubernatorial elections? Where exactly were these voters hiding, and what suddenly inspired them to flood the polls for Sherrill this time around?
The timing alone raises serious eyebrows — especially in a state where Democrats already have every structural advantage and one of the most finely tuned political machines in the country. Adding 500,000 new voters in just four years, with nearly all of them breaking the same way, isn’t something that happens by accident. It doesn’t look organic.
It definitely raises eyebrows — and a lot of questions. The polls were off by double digits, turnout spiked in ways that don’t match demographic trends, and with no voter ID requirements plus lax enforcement of mail-in ballot rules, New Jersey practically rolled out a red carpet for potential abuse.
Call it “irregularities,” call it “anomalies,” or call it what it probably is — something far more concerning — but either way, these results deserve real scrutiny. Republicans didn’t just lose; they got wiped out in a race every indicator suggested was competitive.
Something clearly happened in New Jersey — and until someone can explain where half a million new Democratic voters suddenly appeared from, and why every single pollster in the country missed the mark by a mile, those questions aren’t going anywhere.
